I have owned the CP8400 now for just under two months and would like to share impressions with you all. My first digital was the CP990 followed by the CP5000 for the past three years. These form the foundation for any comparisons. I have posted a variety of images from my first shoots at
Three years of time is nearly two generations in the world of digital technology and Gordon Moore's Law is vividly at work here. The camera starts quickly, focuses quickly and positively, saves images quickly and is far more responsive in every way compared to the past. It is a real pleasure in the field.
The lens is very sharp. I have all in camera sharpening turned off, as I did with the CP990 and CP5k, preferring to sharpen on an individual basis in Photoshop CS. I find that where I was using an amount of 500 with a radius of 0.25 on the Lightness channel nearly always, the amount has dropped to 200 to 350 in most cases with the CP8400. The super-wide WC-E75 if anything, has less barrel distortion than the venerable WC-E68. It is now possible to overlay a grid on the screen for easy alignment with verticals or the horizon – greatly appreciated with a lens so wide. Like the WC-E68, the existence of such a lens is more than adequate reason to own this camera.
It is the logical successor to the CP5k, being optimized for wide angle work. Though there is only the difference between 19mm and 18mm, the lens is noticeably wider.
Without the WC-E75, the camera is still very useable, having and equivalent of a 24mm lens native. While limited for architectural interiors, it is quite nice as a walkin’ ‘round camera just as is.
As with the CP5k, the accessory battery pack improves handling immensely, lowering the centre of gravity and adding mass for easier holding at low shutter speeds. The grip has been redesigned for greater comfort and holding grip. Now it is just as comfortable to shoot vertical format shots as it is for horizontals.
Redesign shows up in most every aspect of the camera. Many of the functions that required paging through three pages of menus can now be accessed directly from a button or the Control Knob. Furthermore the first menu to come up when the button is pressed is a menu that the user can completely customize with the items most frequently needed. Obviously, the designers have learned a lot in the past three years..
With the CP5k, I used the combined selectable areas for both exposure and focus. The five have now been expanded to nine, and it feels like they have been somewhat narrowed. Even in extreme backlighting, I am getting perfect exposures with this method. Having cut my teeth on Ansel Adams’ books, having a live, real-time histogram is beyond dreams. Ansel would have killed for this.
I have see no evidence of the kind of highlight clipping that was common with the CP5k when shooting RAW. The current loader with Photoshop CS handles .nef files extremely well, allowing one to deal with extreme exposure conditions, area by area. The only reason for less than perfect exposures now is having the camera in the hands of a bone-head photographer. Tools just don’t get any better than this.
I have also found that getting perfect colour either in-camera JPEGs or RAW is a lot easier. The CP990 was great when shooting out-of-doors in clear sunlight, but otherwise never quite satisfactory, even when using a grey-card for on-site balancing and again in Photoshop. The CP5k was a vast improvement over the CP900 and now the CP8400 just delivers what I want. Interestingly at higher ISO settings, the noise looks very much like the grain of film, rather than the smears of colour with the CP5k. Both are easily controlled in Lab mode in Photoshop.
The buffer is both larger and empties much quicker than with the CP5k. Once the buffer is completely full, the camera becomes available on a shot by shot basis as the images are transferred to the card. It writes in the background. On high-speed continuous, one can shoot five images compared to the three with the CP5k – and these are 8MP as compared to 5MP images. On low speed continuous, the CP5k was good for about seven or eight shots with Fine JPEG. With the larger 8MP images it is up to around 14. This of course, can be extended by increasing the compression or decreasing the resolution. It would be a rare case now that one would miss a shot because the camera was busy writing.
At f-2.6, the lens is one of the faster among its peers. Overall sensitivity seems to have increased as well for low light shooting. The monitor on the CP5k goes black long before that of the CP8400 making available darkness shooting a pleasure. Of course noise reduction is there, but while shooting an eight second exposure with the CP990 looked like shooting through a swarm of psychedelic fireflies, and there were less – though still many – hot pixels with the CP5k, none are seen with the CP8400. In fact I have done a full minute test shot with none showing.
Not only does the CP8400 now have a fully 10 minutes of Bulb, it also has timed long exposures of 30 seconds, one, two, three, five and ten minutes. It also has an interval timer with the same settings. Using both, I expect to get some spectacular lightning pictures this summer, with minimal danger to myself. It was always a bit thrilling to have my hand on a metal tripod as the fury of the storm approached. Of course, the timer will also do stop motion of opening flowers and the like.
My 8x10 and letter-sized prints are every bit the equal of any 35mm prints I have ever made. It is the tail end of winter in Western Canada, and I have yet to shoot anything epic enough to warrant a 13x19. With 40% more pixels and the ED-glass lens, I expect some visible improvement over those from the CP5k.
All in all, I have yet to find anything not to like in comparison to the cameras that have gone before. It fits the way I work precisely as the CP5k did, and is a better camera in every way. Yeah, I would love to have a camera of the same design with an even wider f1.0 lens and a sensor large enough to shoot at ISO6400 with no noise. Some years down the road, it will probably happen.
For now, there is simply no camera on the market AT ANY PRICE for which I would trade. The camera is incredibly stealthy, allowing me to work within the subject’s private, personal space so I can get very intimate spontaneous portraits. For anyone who loves to work with extreme wide angles, it is the only game in town.
larry!
ICQ 76620504
